Biography chronicles Hip history

This week, the first-ever biography of The Tragically Hip was released. Inside the pages of The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip, author Michael Barclay chronicles the band’s career, from their beginnings in Kingston to their incredible success as “Canada’s band” to their final concert tour in the summer of 2016 and beyond. With the band declining to be involved in the project, Barclay instead turned to previously published interviews and spoke with dozens of the band’s peers, associates and fans in putting together a comprehensive history about the band’s recordings, concerts, tours and more. Barclay, who has written about music for Maclean’s magazine and is the co-author of Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995, took some time to chat with the Whig’s Peter Hendra about his new book. (Note: Answers have been edited and often shortened for space.)

• When did you start writing the book, and why did you want to write it?

I started the book exactly a year ago, and I wrote it for four months.

The reaction I got from my Maclean’s pieces (about the Hip) was so strong, and what people told me was that they really appreciated the context and hearing from key figures in the band’s history.

I think a lot of what was written that summer (of 2016) was, ‘Rah, rah, Canada’s band,’ lots of flag waving. I, personally, as a fan, didn’t think it went much deeper than that. There were certainly some great pieces … but generally I was disappointed and it really struck me that, 30 years on, there was still no book that wove all of this stuff together.

I think this band, frankly, is very poorly documented. … And I really wanted to write the book I thought fans deserved and that I, as a fan, deserved. Until Long Time Running, which was a brilliant film, I didn’t feel served as a fan by anything that came out of the Hip camp in terms of documentation.

• With that in mind, had you thought about writing a biography about the band before?

I honestly thought someone else would. I am not the biggest Tragically Hip fan in the world as that is a very high bar to reach … so I kind of thought someone else would do this, but they didn’t.

It wasn’t until the Maclean’s stuff; I didn’t know what it would be or what it would be about, if it would be a history, if I would be writing a news story. What it turned out to be was a contextual piece. Even before I started writing it, I posted my Q&As online, thinking that Hip geeks would enjoy this fodder. But it was more than Hip geeks — a lot of people wanted to read those. That’s what made me think there was a book here, with or without the band’s participation.

• You said that you aren’t the biggest Tragically Hip fan, but a fan nonetheless. When did you first see The Tragically Hip and how many times have you seen them?

The first time was a Canada Day show, of course, in Barrie. It was a radio festival. They were very early on the bill, maybe around 1 in the afternoon. The EP had come out the Christmas before, so this was 1988. And I was a big garage rock fan, and the Gruesomes were one of my favourite bands at the time. And they had a very similar vibe. Downie, obviously, was a riveting performer. I loved watching Johnny Fay. It just really hit me. I was 16 years old, and I really loved raw rock ‘n’ roll, and there wasn’t a lot of that in the ’80s. … That’s what I loved about them: there was a rock ’n’ roll energy.

Lyrically, it didn’t really hit me until later, certainly Up to Here and especially Road Apples and forward the lyrics became much more of a focus. And then I saw them as much as an underage person could, which wasn’t that often. …

I took a few years off, and then they started booking all of my favourite bands, so I saw them quite steadily through the rest of the ’90s, and then only twice in the past 18 years.

• What’s the last Hip album you listened to?

Man Machine Poem, because it’s different. My three favourites are Up to Here, Day for Night, and Man Machine Poem.

• What was the impetus behind writing a biography about the band now?

The impetus was that I felt like people were hungry for this story. This story touched people who weren’t even fans of the band.

That (2016) tour rallied so much of Canada partially because of the Terry Fox narrative of it. Everybody in this country, everybody has been or will be touched by cancer somehow in their immediate circle.

And right now Gord Downie is famous for the way in which he died, and for Secret Path, both of which are incredibly powerful stories, but they’re not the only stories. I want to remember a performer who was very much alive and virile and in the moment, an intensely creative and curious person with a rich body of work.

• Many people consider the Hip to be Canada’s band. Do you agree with that sentiment?

I think people put that on them, not something they put on themselves, aside from the fact that they always had a gig on Canada Day. Gord Downie sings more about other parts of the world than he does Canada, but because he is one of the only people who sings about Canada, that gets put on him. If there is a Canadian thing about The Tragically Hip, I would say it’s their humility, their work ethic, their approach to celebrity — which is to say disdainful — the egalitarian nature of the band in that even though they clearly had a superstar up in front, that this was a five-piece band that stayed together with the exact same lineup for 32 years, which is almost unprecedented in rock ‘n’ roll history. They are all part of that fabric. If you take one of them out, they wouldn’t be the Hip.

• There’s a lot of detail in the book, but I’m sure there were details you left out about certain recordings, shows, and songs to make it more readable for the average person. Was that a concern? For whom were you writing the book?

I worried about that and ended up leaving some of that stuff in.

I wanted it to appeal to everybody. I wanted there to be enough catnip in there for Hip fans to learn things they didn’t know before, or to be reminded of things they have totally forgotten about, because this tidbit appeared in one article that you can only find it on microfilm now.

But I also wanted to write it for my parents and their friends, who know nothing about this band but were intrigued by the summer of 2016 and wanted to know why we cared about this band in the first place.

The way the book is structured, every second chapter is thematic, so if you are not actually that interested in how they made each record, you could just read every second chapter and read about Downie’s approach to performance and dance, their direct connections to hockey, you can learn about the myth of their American failure. So the book was constructed so you can read it top to bottom or just the parts that interest you.

• In the book, we learn more about the band members professionally, but not personally. Is that something you did on purpose?

Yup. They’ve never shared a lot about their personal lives, and maybe this is very Canadian of me, but I think it’s none of my business. I consciously chose not to name their children. I mention when they got married, who they got married to, and I talk about their parents and siblings just as general biographical narrative. The rest of it they’ve chosen to keep very private and I respect that. And I also don’t think it informs the narrative that much.

• I know it was the publisher’s idea to include the subtitle singling out Gord Downie for marketing purposes, yet there is a greater focus on Downie than the other members of the band. Why?

First of all, he put out more records outside of the band. That’s the obvious answer. Whether anybody inside the Hip camp likes it or not, people love Gord Downie, and people love singers in bands. As I say in the preface, people do not have tattoos of Gord Sinclair. Maybe they should — he’s my favourite musician in the band. That’s who we are as a people: we listen to the singer, we focus on the singer, we watch what the singer is doing. People weren’t looking for the facial reactions of The Tragically Hip on that 2016 tour, they were looking to see if Gord Downie was crying, if he was breaking down onstage. I wanted to examine if that’s what was happening there — was it performance, was it real? And, obviously, there’s Downie as a lyricist. That’s a central appeal of the band, his lyrics, and that’s why there’s a chapter about his writing.

• The Tragically Hip are well known for their loyal fan base. How do they compare to other bands’ fans?

I’ve never delved into any kind of fandom, so this was all new to me. It was equally crazy and inspiring. Crazy just being the devotion to every single thing the band touched, and the defensiveness.

It was also incredibly inspiring to see the fans who had the loyalty that I didn’t, and just how much of their daily lives this band is, and has been, for so long. These are not records these people put on every once in awhile; this is a band whose music they think about every single day.

• Do you think there’s a part of the book that is going to upset some people?

Of course. That’s what rock ‘n’ roll should do. (laughs)

Steve Jordan, former CKLC DJ, told me he loved the book — he was an early reader, I gave him a first draft — he said, ‘I love hearing your opinions. I don’t know that I need so many of your opinions in this book.’ Which I took to heart. I left a lot of them in. It makes it more interesting.

It should be something you debate about. I want this to be the best barroom debate you had in college about who’s the better guitarist or drummer. The debates that happen on those fan sites all of the time. I want this to prompt discussion.

I also wanted to include criticism of the band. And here’s an advantage of an unauthorized biography: I didn’t want to write a hagiography, which would be very easy to do in the wake of Downie’s death. I include some of the bad reviews because I feel like history is, ‘Canada has always loved this band.’ They had some harsh reviews. As with anything you love, I think it’s healthy to encounter that criticism and reckon with it, take it or leave it.

phendra@postmedia.com

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Essentials

What: Author Michael Barclay signs copies of his new biography, The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and The Tragically Hip.